Juan García
Pater Juan Arnaro Sebão García i Velazquez '''(1908-1949), generally known simply as '''Juan García, was a Qotian priest, leader, and revolutionary who led the March on Qotopolis in August 1949 and sparked the Qotian Revolution as well as the Revolutions of 1950. García was a parish priest from the town of Borrhès in Vinceñas, where he came to be known for his impassioned rhetoric, not only on Centrist doctrine, which he often stretched to extend his own political beliefs, but also on social responsibility, politics and nationalist. He was a democratic socialist, nationalist, and anti-monarchist. He came to be known throughout Vinceñas for his powerful oration and charismatic persona and became involved in the Qotian democratic movement in the late 1940s. García was one of the chief organizers of the March on Qotopolis on August 17, 1949. The march proved to be far larger than anyone had expected, with estimates of attendance varying from five hundred thousand to over two million. García would give the last speech, the highlight of his career, in which he spoke passionately about his beliefs, highlighting Qotian nationalism, the importance of individuality and democracy, the role of rationalism and the duty of the Qotian people to rebel against the king and establish a government of the people. He ended his speech with "Viva la républica, viva la révolution, et viva l'Eqota!" (Long live the republic, long live the revolution, and long live Eqota). ''The crowd became riled up, and, in the mayhem, an unnamed member of the national guard shot García in the head. He died almost instantly, and the organized protest soon erupted into a full-out riot. King Alvaro IX had to bring out the military to subdue the civilians; over five hundred were killed and several thousand were arrested, sparking the Qotian Revolution of 1949 that would eventually lead to the overthrowal of the eight-hundred year old Qotian monarchy and the establishment of a democracy in Eqota. García has often been considered one of the most important and influential figures of the twentieth century, even though he achieved little himself. His speech has been quoted more times than any other speech in history, and his words and ideas helped ignite revolutions in Ukar, Geskia, Zenia, Rhamidia, and North Tyrennea. García was named TERRA Magazine's most influential person of 1949 as well as the most influential figure of the twentieth century. García's name and image have often been used as a symbol of revolution, of power to the people, and of nationalism throughout the world, often without respect to his actual ideas or accomplishments, in order to achieve a multitude of differing and frequently contradictory goals. Early Life García was born on April 12, 1908 in Borrhès, Vinceñas to Pedro García and Luísa Velazquez, and was named Juan Arnaro Sebão for San Juan de Luñes as well as for his two grandfathers, Arnaro García and Sebão Velazquez. He had one sister, nineteen months younger, named Nateljúa Gravina María. While they were never starving, they were a relatively poor family; Pedro had at one point been a preacher, but now lived as a farmer. García later described his upbringing as "cold and humble," and spoke often of his father's straight-laced attitude and religious devotion. However, he had an uncle, Isidro, who had made his way as a doctor and developed a strong relationship with Juan from an early age as he had no children of his own. Isidro was a closeted homosexual, a fact that Juan discovered early in his life and revealed to his father, who, out of religious disapproval, largely disowned his brother and attempted to cut off Juan's contact to him. Juan, however, had no problem with Isidro's sexuality, and found him warmer and friendlier than his own father, and continued to spend time with him regardless. Juan chose to finish high school on a promise to his father that he would use his education to study religion. After completing high school with unusually high marks, García was accepted at the University of Eqota in Qotopolis. His uncle Isidro offered to pay his tuition, and García left for Qotopolis in 1926. At the University, his horizons were broadened; while he furthered his appreciation of the Centrist faith, he also became a socialist and an anti-monarchist. He dual majored in religious studies and political science. He was accepted to the university's divinity school in 1930, which he began attending, again with Isidro's backing. However, his uncle died only a year into García's seminary education. He returned home to Borrhès for the funeral, where he learned only before his uncle's casket that the man had left him his entire fortune. It was more than enough money for García to continue his education; however, he did not immediately return to Qotopolis. He had many misgivings about his education at the seminary, feeling that many of their teachings strayed from the messages that he had interpreted from the holy books of Centrism. He found them too moralistic, focusing on people's private lives and overly chastising people for their sexual leanings and personal choices, while García felt that the only thing that mattered was good works and the struggle to help the poor and fight against the forces of corruption. He found the elistic, monarchist system of the church to be an inherent hypocrisy, and decided never to return to the seminary. He instead moved closer to the center of Borrhès and used all of his money to open a poor house, with a soup kitchen and a shelter for the homeless and destitute. He lost contact with his father, who disapproved of him for having not finished seminary. Rise to Prominence Because of having not finished school, García was not able to become an ordained priest. However, he did become a chaplain at the Church of Our Lady of Peace (Égliso de Notra Dama de la Paz'')'' in Borrhès and was able to speak occasionally in church. From the beginning, he gave impassioned speeches about helping the poor and about deemphasizing the moral judgement of people's lives and instead fighting inequality. The local priest took a notice of him, and the congregation frequently requested more of his sermons. The local bishop was soon made aware of his popularity and gave him control of his own church, ''Égliso del' Espirito ''in neighboring Santanira. At the ''Égliso del'Espirito, Juan García passionately urged his congregation to do good works in the local community and developed a devoted following, many of whom traveled from many towns away. Within a year, García opened a poor house in Borrhès with what remained of his money. He refused to turn away anyone in need, and he traveled across the country giving speeches to raise money. He soon acquired enough money to open another poor house in Santanira, and soon one in the provincial capital, Ibríz. García stretched himself extremely thin between services at the church and his work with the poor, but notably refused to stop his interaction with individual impoverished Qotians. He became a sort of local celebrity in Vinceñas, often referred to as the "Good Samaritan" and the "Patron of the Poor." While initially García shied away from using his newfound fame to make a political statement, his advice soon changed. "The more time I spent with the poor, the more I saw that the problem was not with the common people but with the government," he would later say. García began campaigning actively for social democracy. In 1945, he participated in a republican rally in Ibríz, at which he gave a rousing keynote speech. Later that year, García joined a much larger republican rally in Qotopolis, where he had been promised significant speaking time. However, during García's speech, the rally was broken up by police, and turned violent. Four people were killed, and over a hundred were arrested, García among them. His trial for treason came up several months later. García refused the public defender offered him, claiming that the man was incompetent and clearly corrupted by the government; at the trial, which was televised due to García fame in his home state, he famously said that he refused to defend himself to a justice system that was inherently corrupt, and that he would not eat until Eqota lifted its bans on free speech. García's hunger strike became highly publicized, as he refused to eat for the next two weeks. He was hospitalized and force-fed through a tube; a video of García struggling against his captors as they force fed him made its way to national television, and under immense pressure the government agreed to pardon García. However, he refused to leave prison until all of the other demonstrators who had been arrested in Qotopolis were released, and Eqota lifted its ban on free speech. García remained in the hospital being force-fed, as the government carefully tried to prevent him from becoming a martyr, knowing full-well that a preacher known as the "Patron of the Poor" would be too easy to use for causes against the government. In December of 1947, after two brutal years in prison, the government finally agreed to pardon all of the demonstrators who had been arrested in Qotopolis and at four other republican demonstrations. García emerged a revolutionary hero, and immediately gave a speech in Ibríz upon his return. In his speech, he boldly declared that the "revolution was only beginning." Rhetoric of the "revolution" began to spread across the nation, appearing in grafitti and in underground newspapers. García returned to preaching and to working in poor houses, which he expanded and opened in several new towns. He was closely patrolled by the government, who watched his actions but feared harming him because of his icon status. For the next year, García walked a thin line of civil disobedience, speaking out more openly against the monarchy and refusing to tone down his language. August 17 and Death In August of 1949, García met with other republican leaders to discuss means of pushing forward. Over the course of the summer, the government had been attempting to push back against the tide of republicanism, instituting new, harsher laws against speech and dissent. They decided to organize the "largest civilian demonstration ever seen" on the streets of Qotopolis, effectively closing down the city for twenty-four hours and forcing the government to acknowledge them. They determined that they needed a critical mass in order for the government to not be able to simply arrest all of the protestors; the number that they settled on was two hundred thousand demonstrators. August 17 was set as the date, and news was spread out throughout the country via underground newspapers and churches that followed García's tradition. On the day, the protestors all met in the King's Square, in front of the palace, initially only mingling and playing music. The police surrounded the protesters and attempted to prevent more from arriving, but they were soon overwhelmed; estimates of people at the protest go up to two million, which would make it arguably the largest peaceful civilian protest in history. A series of speeches began, garnering massive applause from the crowd. García went last, at 4:30 PM; his speech had been carefully prepared for weeks beforehand. In it, García framed the history of Eqota against that of a march of progress throughout the world that had left their nation behind. He invoked a sense of national loss and of immense shame at the state of the poor in Eqota, as well as a straying from the tenets of Centrism in favor of the decadence of the nobility and a class of oligarchs who were stealing Eqota's rightful destiny as a leader of the free world. He outlined a model of social democratic government "by the people" in strong and charismatic terms. He grew massively impassioned at the end of his speech, finishing with "Viva la républica, viva la révolution, et viva l'Eqota!" (Long live the republic, long live the revolution, and long live Eqota), a phrase that would come to be inextricably associated with García. The crowd erupted after his announcement, and some protestors began to aggress the police surrounding them, who responded by firing on the civilians. The entire protest broke down into a riot as García presided. He attempted to scream into the microphones over the ruckus but could not be heard; several minutes later, he was shot in the head and killed. Television cameras from around the world caught his head exploding backwards in front of a crowd of millions of onlookers, bringing the event immediately to the homes of not a million people but a billion. García's death became one of the most televised and discussed events in history, and is often considered one of the first great news stories of the televised mass-media era. Speech (selected portions) "It is an undeniable fact that over time human societies have progressed from a state of oppression and brutishness toward one of inclusion and equality, and that the march of progress favors the states that embrace the will of the greatest portion of the people. You are with the tide or against it, and at the moment Eqota is against it." "Take a trip around this nation, and then take one around Lasterus. We have missed the future. Our poor are starving, and our rich sit in gilded palaces and profit off of our suffering. In Lasterus, the law is equality of all people, equality of opportunity and freedom of expression, and they have seized the mantle of world domination from around our necks and left us behind in the dust. We are the lost people, and if we do not act now that is what we will be forever. We are caught in a system of the past when the world has moved on to a better one." "Kings love to perpetuate the myth that they are one with the people, that the nation includes them. Allow me to be abundantly clear: the nation is the people, the nation is you, not them. The emperors of yore enslaved the Ukaris, the Geskians, the Niedevans, the Tyrenneans, and told us that they were putting down the barbarians so that we could prosper. No. Humanity is one, we are all one people, one race, and the emperors were not enslaving the other in the name of Eqota but they were enslaving us for their own selfishness. We are Ukar, we are Geskia, we are Niedeva, we are Tyrennea, we are Eqota; and together it is our duty to throw off the shackles of tyranny and to move forward into a future characterized by equality of all people and fraternity between us all." "Our humanity compels us to care for our fellow man. When we see that our fellow man is suffering, it is our duty to help him. To not do so is savagery; to not do so is the loss of our humanity, of our centros. Being human is about love for our brothers and sisters. And when we love someone, we will fight for them. I call on you know to join the fight." "The origins of the world's problems lie not with hatred, because humans' capacity for hatred is immensely limited compared to our capacity for love and goodness. No, the world's problems come not from hatred but from inaction, from the feeling that they are inconsequential and therefore should let the change in the world be done by someone else. If you take nothing else away from my speech, let it be this: every time the world has changed it has been because common people - not hardened revolutionaries, not soldiers, but you, the people - have chosen action over inaction, how chosen that the time is now, not tomorrow, and that the person is you, not your neighbor. I will say that again: the time for action is now, and what we need is you. What Eqota needs is every single one of you to raise your arm and say, 'No,' to say, 'I will not settle for anything less than my birthright, I will not accept anything less than what I deserve and I will not stop fighting until you give it to me.' I spent two years in a prison, and not one day did I give up. Not one day did I decide that the fight was for someone else or for some other time. And here I am. If that's what one man can do, how about two million of us?" "And now they may ask us, 'What are you here for? What are your demands?' They will call us a disorganized mob, and they will write us off, or placate us with pittance. What are our demands? Here are our demands: we demand the abdication of King Alvaro IX and his government, the institution of a constitution that promises freedom of speech and of opportunity for all people in this nation, and a government of the people, a democracy in the vein of Lasterus or Sednyana. We will settle for nothing short of that. We will not stop until our demands are met. We will continue to protest and we will continue to raise our arms and Eqota will not continue until we get what we want. The government must understand that we are Eqota, we are the power and there is no stopping the tide. The revolution is here. We are the revolution. You, and you, and you - each and every one of us. Right here, right now, I need you to promise me to stand together. As one nation, as one united humanity, we will fight against tyranny and we will fight against the forces that will hold back the people of our nation in order to further the interest of the few. We are the many, and the many will prevail over the few if only we can all decide together that the time for action is now. So rise, get to your feet, raise your arms and raise your guns and let's all scream out together so that they can hear us everywhere in the world, so that they can hear us in the shadows and in the gutters and in the depths of the ocean, so that the world resounds with our scream. Long live the republic, long live the revolution, and long live Eqota!" Legacy Category:Eqota Category:Revolution of 1949 Category:Revolutions of 1950 Category:Democratic socialism Category:Nationalism Category:History (Eqota)